Don't Overdo It
The tendency of software entrepreneurs is to write code. Even if they themselves aren't developers, they want to get something working fast.
An admirable sentiment, but not always a smart one.
Take one company. They got some VC money, hired a top-shelf design firm and a development company, and created a terrific looking web site for their ASP service. It was slick, expensive, and had one fatal flaw. The designers—all twenty-somethings with multiple body piercings and tattoos—created something they liked, with trendy, tiny dark gray text on a light gray background. But the target market for the product was very senior execs in big companies. A moment's reflection would have led them to the realization that their customers were almost certainly people over 40: that magic age when your eyesight starts to go. Sure enough, they created a product their customers had to squint at to use. No sale.
This problem is confounded by the strong unwillingness of people to throw away a perfectly good whatnot. Once you've created code, paid to have it written, tested it, it becomes much much harder to go back and start over. Better never to have written it in the first place until you were sure you knew what was required. Slideware, fakeware, prototype: whatever it takes to get decent market validation and UI testing.
